Congratulations to Tomas Tranströmer

The Paris Review congratulates Tomas Tranströmer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature. A valued contributor to the Review, Tranströmer is a poets’ poet, one whose name has come up in several of our interviews. Jorie Graham and Robert Bly both cite his influence. Translating Tranströmer, Bly told us, “was an amazing experience for me because there was a kind of image appearing in him that I’d never seen before ... You feel yourself, because of the work you’ve done on the image, invaded by the image. You feel that it has become a part of your house like someone who’s moved into your house, and your house is changed then.”

More prosaically, perhaps, Seamus Heaney credited Tranströmer and his wife, Monika, with this excellent-sounding marital advice: “Things will work fine as long as you see each other every six weeks ... Just don’t let more than six weeks go past.”